Town Square

Audit finds flaws in Palo Alto's refuse bills

Original post made
on May 31, 2014

Dozens of Palo Alto's refuse customers have received inaccurate bills for trash pick-up services because of discrepancies in the data used by the city and its hauler, a new audit from the Office of City Auditor has found.

Next could the city please audit the water bills which are outrageous, in error, and raising residents blood pressure.
A widow was bill for an excessive amount and had to fight tooth and nail to get it fixed. Another resident was billed in the $300 for four days. The billing system is a city-wide mess.

Posted by Please please please
a resident of Midtown
on May 31, 2014 at 1:22 pm

Pull-ease someone audit PA Utilities, especially concerning the water bills. There is no way in Hades that we are using as much water as they say we are, or are we using as much gas or electricity as we say. They even called a contracted energy consultant to come out to our house, and he concluded that there was simply nothing more we could do than what we are already doing, and he wrote this in a report to them.

However, they refuse to heed the report and continue to harrass us, even though we have asked them ( three times now) to stop it.

Were it not for the fact that we have to pay capital gains even though we buy another house, we would leave this god-forsaken city.

Posted by Wayne Martin
a resident of Fairmeadow
on May 31, 2014 at 2:37 pm

This audit does not do a very good job drawing a complete picture of the subject under audit--in this case the P/W billing database for refuse pickup. The audit points out that about 625 customer records were not synchronized with the contractor's database (RAMS) .. and that about 30 percent of these customers had incorrect billing that amounted up to adjustments of $175K. Presumably this means that about $600K of billing error has resulted from these errors (over the past three years). The audit does not provide any sense of how long these errors have been in place, or how the errors came to be in the two databases. Presumably, once all of the records with discrepencies are corrected, then the billing errors will drop to close to zero.

The audit does not mention if the errors were in residential, or commercial, accounts--but it stands to reason that residents would be more sensitive to any billing errors that were in the City's favor.

Two questions arise: 1) why did the City require that the contractor keep a synchronized database, 2) how much is it going to cost to actually create a syncronization interface, if this synchronization is really required.

A number of problems found in this audit seem kind of minor. Unfortunately, the audit does not make any effort to indentify the level of effort that might be required to correct these problems.

Another problem with all City of Palo Alto audits is that no one is identified as responsible for the area under audit, or the individuals who responsible for the problems being identified. Sadly, no one is ever responsible for failures of City of Palo Alto systems.

Posted by Resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on May 31, 2014 at 2:38 pm

The charge is more like a tax we are forced to pay. We can't alter the amount charged by not putting out our cans when they are only partially full. We can't get a vacation hold. The only choice we have is the size of can - not how much trash we generate.

Posted by Dishonesty
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Jun 2, 2014 at 6:54 pm

I think that the Utility Dept is simply making these things up. They send letters to us claiming that our neighborhood has lots of other households like ours. I highly, highly doubt that there are many other 1700sf houses on a 6000sf lot that house seven people, 3 generations: 5 adults, two children under 3 years of age, the children and grandma home all day. If there are, I high
T doubt they would be as water efficient and electricity efficient as we are: all low-flow faucets, shower heads, toilets; showers taken at the gym, babies not bathed daily, no vegetation in the back yard; drought-resistant plants in the front yard; no flowers or vegetable gardens; laundry is air dried; paper plates and plastic spoons and forks are used--one dishwasher load every other day,,etc.

Every neighbor on our block is complaining about the rude letters from the city telling them they use too much water and electricity, when most of the neighbors are dual income, 0-1 kid, no one home during the day to use all this water and electricity. It must be pure fabrication.

This is blatant dishonesty by the Utility Dept, and they should stop wasting resources printing these fallacious letters!

I have to weigh in with the others about inaccuracies and problems with the utilities department. In the past I have gone through numerous employees there who couldn't figure out a very simple problem I had in the past, plus many of them were rude. In fact, all but one were incompetent and rude. And the simple issue went on and on for months. I don't trust them not to make mistakes and lie. They're certainly the beneficiaries of lots of our tax dollars. So far I haven't seen an outrageous problem with the water bill, but it does seem high. I wondered if they were reading the right meter.

Posted by Mr.Recycle
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Jun 4, 2014 at 2:25 pm

If you think your bill is wrong stop acting like a victim and go check the reading yourself and compare. Odds are it isn't a mistake, it is that you were watering more or using your /a/c moe during the heat wave last month. But even if the meter reader made a mistake (they are human), just call the utility company with the correct meter reading and have them fix it. What isn't helpful is calling and saying "my bill is too high". What do you expect them to do?

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